Online Journal of the Hudson Valley Coalition for Life.
"Every human being is called to solidarity in a world battling between life and death" - Ignacio Ellacuria, Jesuit martyr in El Salvador

December 21, 2014

The government’s latest report confirms the good news reported by Guttmacher earlier this year. That not only the number of abortions in the U.S. have dropped to lows not seen since the earliest days of legal abortion in America, so, too, have abortion rates and abortion ratios.

... abortions from California or other states missing since 1998 might have given us somewhat higher rates. When numbers from California were available, the abortion rates for the U.S. were about 2 to 3 points higher than those calculated without them. But that does not change that the 2011 abortion rate of 13.9 has dropped by nearly half (44.4%) from what it was at its high point in 1980: 25 abortions per thousand women of reproductive age.

Likewise, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions for every 1,000 live births) is at a historic low, with 219 abortions for every thousand births (Ed. Note: This would put the abortion rate at 18%). [1] The same caveat mentioned above about missing California numbers applies here. But the enormous drop from 359.2 abortion for every 1,000 births in 1980 to the 219 for every 1,000 for 2011 cannot simply be explained by missing states with high abortion proclivities.

CDC versus Guttmacher

Around Thanksgiving every year, the CDC publishes its annual report of national abortion data. This year’s report “Abortion Surveillance – United States, 2011″ issued November 28, 2014 (it takes the government a few years to collect and process the state data), shows the number and rate of abortions dropping by 5% over the previous year. The ratio of abortion to live births declining by nearly as much, 4%.

The Guttmacher Institute’s report, issued earlier this year, showed similar significant drops in the number of abortions, though starting from higher numbers. As we have explained, Guttmacher surveys abortion clinics directly while the CDC relies on state health reports, meaning Guttmacher’s numbers will always be higher than CDC’s.